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Author: Starshine Roshell

Me Time

Surely I heard him wrong.

“I think I’ll take the boys camping over your birthday weekend,” my husband had said, “and give you some time to yourself.”

As a freelance writer with two young sons and eight employers at any given instant, my “me-time” is confined to the shower and the car, driving to fetch someone from somewhere — not time for myself, just time by myself.

So his offer sounded absurd. I ran it through my trusty guilt check: I didn’t ask, he offered. They love camping, I hate it. It is my birthday.

I’m shocked by the lump in my throat as my family drives away. Is it instinctive grief over losing control of my flock? Or (gulp) a fear that I won’t know what to do with myself when they’re gone?

Facebook Friendships Hard to Ignore

If I were shopping for friends, I wouldn’t choose someone like me. I don’t have a killer mojito recipe, a vacation home in Maui, or a cache of uproarious travel stories to share over dinner. I’m bad with birthdays. I don’t even play tennis.

But suddenly everyone wants to be my pal.

I recently created an account on Facebook, the social networking site for folks too old for MySpace and too lazy for LinkedIn. No sooner had I filled out a profile than I started getting “friend requests” from people I know. And people I barely know. And people I don’t know and don’t want to know.

“Joe Random has added you as a friend,” the alert reads. You click one button to “confirm” the friendship, another to “ignore.”

I find myself wishing there was another button: “Explain.” Perhaps I’m stuck on semantics, but the use of the word “friend” to describe these tenuous, meaningless digi-relationships has me confused. Who are these Facebook amigo-seekers and what exactly do they want from me?

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